A prominent Ebonyi lawyer, Chief Amos Ogbonnaya, has sued Governor Dave Umahi at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria over his unpaid allowances as the coordinator of Anuagata Development Centre in the Ohaozara Local Government Area.

He is asking the court to order the government to pay him N20.6mmillion being his accumulated imprest, duty allowances and security vote for the 53 months (between 2015 and 2020) he served as coordinator.

He explained that the sum is different from his entitled transport allowances for trips he embarked on within the state in the course of attending all government functions he was invited to as a coordinator.

According to him, he was unable to put a sum to the trips because the office of the Permanent Secretary and Protocol Unit had deliberately refused to provide him with the manifests despite his written requests.

The former coordinator gave a breakdown of the unpaid entitlements as Imprest and Security vote, N16.6m; Duty Tour Allowance, N3.5m, and travel claim of N80,000 for four days trip outside the state.

Listed as defendants in the suit are Governor Umahi, Ebonyi State Joint Local Government Allocation Committee; Commissioner For Local Government, Chieftaincy Matters and Rural Development; Attorney-General and Justice Commissioner and Permanent Secretary, Government, Mr. Austin Udude, who also heads the Protocol Unit.

In the suit marked NICN/EN/07/2021, Ogbonnaya narrated how the government deprived him the entitlements as a coordinator before he was removed from office for refusing to “obey an unlawful order from the office of His Excellency, the Governor, to attack unarmed (#EndSARS) protesters in the development centre.”

Among the reliefs sought are: “An order of directing the defendants, jointly and severally, to pay him N16,560,000 only being unpaid arrears of monthly imprest and security vote as a former Coordinator of Anuagata DC;

“An order directing the defendants to pay to him N3,456,000 as arrears of Duty Tour Allowances for attending 192 official government functions within the state;

“An order directing the defendants to pay him N80,000 being total arrears of Approved Transport Claims for attending four official government functions outside the state from the period of February 2016 to December 2018; and

“An order directing Mr Udude to release forthwith, the Certified True Copies (CTC) of all governor’s manifest by which the petitioner, with other government functionaries, were invited to government functions within and outside the state from September 2015 to October 2020.” (The Nation)

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